


Mark just how everything Changes

by Criminally_Capricious



Series: Mogens Things [1]
Category: Klaus (2019)
Genre: Not a ship, alva's awkward smalltalk lol, blink and you miss it really, mogens quotes moby dick from memory, tidbit of mogens past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:13:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22537579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Criminally_Capricious/pseuds/Criminally_Capricious
Summary: Alva and Mogens run into one another, and walk a little way.
Relationships: Mogens & Alva
Series: Mogens Things [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1621636
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Mark just how everything Changes

Some people found fresh snow very beautiful. A crisp coating of glittering white over the town helped fill in some of the cracks, made the streets seem less grey and the cosiness of your own warm hearth all the more inviting.

There was a certain charm to it, Mogens supposed as he finished tying off the mooring line with numb fingers, if only you didn’t have to stand outside in it gathering icicles on your earlobes.  
  
He wound the slack of the line into a neat loop and dropped it at his feet, kicking it aside and turning to begin the long trudge up the hill from the dock.  
He watched his boots crunching through the fresh fall, part of him childishly satisfied with being the first to make prints in it, but mostly to keep his footing steady of the slope, which could give you a devil of a time when it was iced over if you weren’t careful.  
  
He knew that firsthand.  
  
Thankfully there was a small wooden staircase that led up towards the town center just a quarter of the way up the slope, winding up through the crooked houses and connecting the back streets of Smeerensburg like the tributaries of a river, and he reached it gratefully after several careful minutes of sidestepping.  
The day had been long, and had included a four and a half hour trip to the mainland with a boatload of post, and another four and a half back with emptied mailbags.  
He also had small parcel of meat pies from the harbour master’s daughter, Signe, who had been practicing her baking and had managed this season to produce things that were actually edible, to his pleasant surprise.  
  
His memory of last year’s blackened oat cakes was a regrettable one.  
  
His knees ached from standing, his back ached from hauling heavy bags, and whatever parts of him didn’t ache were numb with cold and would ache soon enough.  
The staircase stretched long before him, and for a minute Mogens considered just sitting down right there and then and resting for a while in the narrow little walkway, sheltered from the wind…but if he sat down now he would stay there all night.  
  
Refocusing on his feet, he forced his stiff legs to keep moving.  
  
“You’re old, Mogens” He grumbled under his breath, shoving his hands under his armpits to get some warmth back into his fingers and glaring down at his boots.  
  
“You’re old and you can’t even manage the stairs. Might as well take you out back and shoot you.”  
  
“My word, that’s been an option this whole time?”  
  
Cursing heartily and staggering to keep his balance on the steps, Mogens reached out a hand to steady himself on the wall and squinted up at the figure standing by the next turn.  
Alva looked back, a sardonic half smile curling her lips. In her arms was cradled a brown paper bag, probably full of coloured chalk, or ink bottles, or some other thing for her classroom.  
  
“Miss Alva, you ain’t ever heard tell of warning a man before you appear out of thin air?”  
  
Snorting, she adjusted her grip on the paper bag and drawled;  
“I’ve been standing here the whole time, Mogens. What, is your eyesight going too?”.  
  
Adjusting her grip on the paper bag, she turned towards the path again and paused, looking back at him, in an unexpected invitation to walk beside her.  
Steady on his feet again, he quickly shoved his hand back under his arm and settled for an exaggeratedly courteous acknowledging nod rather than tipping his cap.  
His fingers were cold enough already, and she _had_ almost sent him pitching backwards down the stairs.  
  
“Ha, Ha, Ha. Tell me, do you spend a lot of time lurking in dark corners? Doesn’t exactly fly with your chipper new image now, does it?”  
  
she ignored him, and waited until he had caught up with her on the steps to begin her ascent again. He wondered if she had seen him tying up the ferry and decided to wait for him.  
It was a strange thought.  
They walked in silence for a minute or two, listening to their own breathing as they laboured up the steps.  
  
Why in God’s name was this town built on such a harsh slope? Why hadn’t he settled in a house closer to the docks? Because they were all drafty and coated in icicles, he reminded himself halfheartedly, but then again everything in Smeerensburg was drafty and coated in icicles.  
  
“Do you have far to go?” He barely caught the question, he was so absorbed in his thoughts.  
  
He looked at Alva, surprised. She deliberately didn’t turn to look at him, staring straight ahead at the stairway, and he frowned slightly.  
  
“Hmm? Ah, no, no, not too far.”  
  
It dawned on him then that although she had lived here for just over five years now, she probably had no idea where he lived.  
  
She had never asked before, and he had never mentioned it.  
  
“I’m near the grocers, up on Blindvei.”  
  
“Oh, that’s….not very far from the school, is it?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
They walked in silence again for a few more minutes, and he almost chuckled when he caught her strained expression out of the corner of his eye. The silence was comfortable to him, but he supposed she must find it awkward.  
She hadn’t willingly started a conversation with him that wasn’t about shipping supplies or booking passage to the mainland since her first winter in town, after realising that he wasn’t going to help her talk out the family feud between the Krums and the Ellingboes. Something about her pained look amused him – he couldn’t say why – and he took pity on her.  
Reaching over, he pulled the paper bag out of her arms with a put-upon sigh, ignoring her protesting sounds.  
  
“Now you let me carry that for you, where are my manners. More school supplies, Miss Alva?”  
  
“I was fine carrying it myself, Mogens.”  
  
“Of course you were, but now you don’t have to. Aren’t we lucky?”  
  
The scowl that cut across her face was much more familiar, and Mogens grinned a little wider.  
Turning his face to peer into the bag, a flash of green caught his eye. Curious and wilfully ignorant of the boundaries of privacy, he shifted his grip on the bag to grip it onehanded, ignoring the stinging cold on his knuckles, and reached in to grab the object.  
  
While Alva hissed something about being nosy to his right, he stared at the book he held in his hand.  
  
For a moment, he felt a small thrill of delight run through him at the familiar title.  
  
Bound in green leather and smelling of paper glue and ink, the gold letters embossed on the cover read: _“Moby Dick” – or – “The Whale” by Herman Melville._ He hadn’t read anything much for a long time – he didn’t have the motivation to hunt for a good book nowadays, and it wasn’t as though he had recommendations pouring in – but he remembered spending a whole month in his late twenties reading and re-reading Ishmael’s tales of Captain Ahab in his bunk, enthralled by the meandering prose. Seeing the green cover again was surprisingly powerful.  
  
“ _‘Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth’_ – words to live by if there ever was any, but that’s just a humble ferryman’s opinion.” he said.  
  
He suddenly felt a little sad for the loss of his own dog-eared, much worn copy, which had been lost over the side of a fishing vessel some years ago.

Alva, who had been interrupted mid-snipe about minding one’s own business, stared at him with furrowed brows.

“You’ve read _Moby Dick_?”

“Of course I’ve read _Moby Dick_ , I didn’t come up with that line off the top of my-”

“No I mean, you read? Like, for fun?”

Drawing himself up in mock offense, Mogens turned to her with his best imitation of Jesper’s signature Raised Eyebrow of Condescension.

“If I were a lesser man” he intoned gravely, “I might be offended by the implication that I’m illiterate.”

Alva’s face froze as her mind caught up with her mouth, and her eyes went very wide. He held his composure for about five seconds as her face went a spectacular shade of pink, and then cracked, shoulders shaking as he leaned in to nudge her shoulder with his elbow.

He laughed all the way up the last flight of stairs, even though Alva punched him quite hard in the arm, and had to pause at the top step to get his breath back.


End file.
